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College of St. 3amc5. 



COMMENCEMENT 



^h^XtQStS, 



BY THE RECTOR. 



\i 




2il)rce ^bbresses 



DELITERED 



AT THE COMMENCEMENTS 



OF 



THE COLLEGE OF ST. JAMES. 

AVASHINGTON COUxNTY, MARYLAND, 
In 1846, 1847, and 1848, 



V 



BT 



JOHN BT KERFOOT, a. M., Rector, 

And Profess(H- of the Evidences and Ethics of Christianity. 




PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE COLLEG 

AT THE REQUEST OF THE BISHOP OF MARTLAl*- r 




FOUNTAIN ROCK, 
WASHINGTON COUNTY, MD., 

1848, 






St2 



^^ 






^ 
^ 



TO THE 

EEY. WILLIAM AUGUSTUS MUHLENEERG, D» D., 
ffi ^ e Jo u n ir c r 

OF THE 

FIRST SCHOOL IN THE CHURCH 

IN AMERICA, 

£ov tijc €l)ri0tian €lincatioit of I)cr ^cntl); 

THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED 

BY THE WRITER, 

AS A TOKEN OF AFFECTIONATE REGARD 

FOR THE PASTOR AND GL^IDE OF HIS EARLY DAYS. 

^nD tt)e Counsellor 

OF HIS MATURER YEARS. 



^OTB\ 



As their dates will show, these Addresses were delivered in 
three successive years. They were not at all designed for the 
press ; but are now published by the Trustees of the College, 
at the suggestion, and by the request of the Bishop of Maryland. 
The request was made and is acceded to, in the hope that the 
publication may serve the interests of the College of St, James, 
by making^ its history and principles better known. 

The order of the Addresses is here changed, so as to bring 
the one of 1847 first before the reader, as containing a brief 
history of the College. 

College of St. James, 

September^ 1848. 



ADDRESS 



AT 



l)e Junior €x\)ihxlxon, 



THURSDAY, JULY 29, 1847. 



We are now engaged for the second lime in the 
annual public exercises of our young college. It is a 
young college ; and yet in our young country there are, 
out of one hundred and nine such institutions, at least six 
younger than this. Compared with the great schools of 
Europe, the oldest American colleges are yet in their 
youth ; though among us, a youth of two hundred and 
nine years, the age of Harvard tJniversity ; or of one 
hundred and fifty-four years, the age of William and 
Mary College ; or of one hundred and forty-seven years, 
that of Yale College, sounds like a good old age. Place 
even these, however, alongside of European schools, and 
their American old age becomes comparative youth. 
For, *'' before the time of Charlemagne, (i. e. before 
the middle of the eighth century,) monastic and cathe- 
dral schools existed in Italy and in England ; after his 
time they were established on the continent north of the 

* Huber's History of the English Universities, vol. 1. pp. 3, 13, 43, &c- 



Alps. These schools were intended for the cultivation 
of higher learning ; and such extent and importance did 
they attain, as to be called places of General Study, 
Literary Universities, or Academies." This quotation 
not only gives the date of the rise of higher schools in 
Europe, but also shows (what is now too much forgotten) 
that at first such schools owed their birth and gave their 
allegiance not to the state but to the Church. The 
Church created and controlled the institutions in which 
her sons were trained. This she did not only because 
the requisite learning was then to be found almost 
exclusivel}^ in her service, but because she realized and 
men acknowledged the truth, that human knowledge 
cannot be thoroughly and safely communicated to the 
3^oung save when united and subordinated to Divine 
Truth, and under a system controlled by an authority 
of higher than human origin. It is a curious fact, that 
the chief exceptions to this rule as to the Ecclesiastical 
origin of schools, existed in Italy. North of the Alps the 
Universities sprang almost without exception from the 
Church* 

The University of Paris attained to high academical 
rank earlier than the two great Universities of England. 
Of the latter, Oxford is the elder ; and an origin is 
claimed for it as far back as the reign of Alfred in the 
latter part of the ninth century ; but its full University 
character was not attained until two centuries later. 
The University of Cam.bridge appears to date its birth 
in the beginning of the twelfth century, and to have 
reached its full rank in the course of the thirteenth. 
Thus, whilst our oldest colleges look back at most but a 
century and a half or two centuries, those of the mother- 
land count seven hundred to one thousand years. Are 
any colleges of our land destined to last so long ? 
Especially, will any of those, which, like our own col- 
lege, are but of yesterday's growth, reach such a hoary 



old age ? Few out of the veiy numerous schools of 
our land can be very long lived ; their very number 
must work against them. And yet each school hopes for 
itself more than an ephemeral existence. We have 
presumed to do so, and we labor on in the faith 
that many later generations may prosecute the work 
which is here just beginning. Infancy is a perilous part 
of human life. Our infancy, measuring even by the age 
of American colleges, is not yet past. But we hope that 
it is not blindness to our own difficulties which leads us 
to think that our prospects for longer life are fair. We 
now complete our fifth academical year. The full 
arranoement of our colleo:e classes durins^ our fourth 
year furnished two candidates for the lower degree in 
the arts in July last ; but did not allow any others then 
in the college to seek the same degree until our Com- 
mencement in 1848. Then, and regular^ in each 
succeeding year, we believe we shall have a graduating 
class. 

As we have this year no such class, it has been 
suggested that in the absence of a Baccalaureate Ad- 
dress, the present audience would be interested in a 
brief notice of our college thus far — its progress and its 
plans — the points in which the constitution, government 
and aims of the college are peculiar — the advantages 
of these peculiarities, and the objections which they 
have suggested to some. If these topics seem more 
egotistical than others of a more abstract nature would 
be, the only apology I have to offer is that there is no 
call now for the usual Baccalaureate ; and that we 
suppose that those who honor the college by their 
attendance on these occasions, will feel interested in 
any elucidation of its character and aims. 

I have said that the college is now concluding its fifth 
academical year. It was opened under its humbler title 
of " St. James's Hall," on Monday, October 3d, 1842, 



by the Bishop of the Diocese. The present main build- 
ing, and then the only one on the grounds, was begun 
as a private residence in the year 1792, but not com- 
pleted until after 1800. After several times changing 
owners, the house and the adjoining twenty acres of 
land were purchased in the spring of 1841 for five thou- 
sand dollars, by the joint subscription of Churchmen in 
this (Washington) county, and devoted by them to the 
use of a Church School. As the house was then greatly 
out of repair, and required some alterations and enlarge- 
ments, as well as a full outfit of suitable furniture, the 
Bishop and Diocese of Maryland expended about eight 
thousand dollars for these purposes before the school 
could be ready for its intended work. It would not 
have been easy to find any other private residence 
which could have been arranged to suit so nearly the 
needs of a school ; but the perfect adaptation to these 
ends of any edifice not originally designed for them, 
is impossible. A new school of young boys may go on 
very well in a large private residence ; but a school long 
enough in existence to be expected to afford full facili- 
ties in every way, and receiving pupils of the advanced 
age and standing of many of our present students, re- 
quires not only more room than this building can afford, 
but different arrangements from any that we can as yet 
make here. This need we hope to see supplied at no 
distant period. 

But the opportunity which the offer of this property 
to the Church presented in 1841, was not the first move- 
ment towards the establishment of a Church School in 
this Diocese. In 1836 and 1837 the Convention of 
Maryland took a very open and decided stand, pro- 
claiming the urgent need of schools, avowedly and 
exclusively controlled by the Church. A Committee of 
two of the most eminentof her Clergy* reported favorably 

* Bev. Drs. Wyatt and J. Johns, 



and strongly, and in terms which make it surprising that 
nothing was accomplished earlier. For five years that 
report served chiefly as a witness of the Diocese against 
herself. She felt and acknowledged her need of schools 
of her own, yet continued to send her children to insti- 
tutions where either religion was, in theory, not taught 
at all, or where it was presented in forms which are 
condemned as radically defective or corrupt. The enter- 
prise of Churchmen in this county, called into being 
chiefly by the energy of the Rector* of St. John's Parish, 
proved the means of some definite and successful action, 
as I have stated, in the early part of 1841. But buildings 
alone do not make a school ; nor is a crowd of scholars 
all that is needed. The first eflTort of the Bishop, there- 
fore, before promising the arrangements which the sub- 
scribers to the purchase reasonably asked, was to secure 
such a management of the Institution as he could com- 
mend to the confidence of the Diocese. This led him to 
visit St. Paul's College in February, 1841, and to apply 
to the then Rector of that College j the Rev. Dr. Muhlen- 
berg, for his aid in the scheme. From this application 
resulted a proposal to me to assume the charge of the 
new school, with the promised aid and advice of the 
friend just named ; — one, whose faithful care of the early 
days of many now living virtuous and useful lives, richly 
entitles him to the regard and reverence which they 
cherish towards him, and whose precepts and example 
of wisdom and piety, many join with me in saying, 
follow us still, deepening their influence, and only more 
clearly proving to us their worth as our years and 
responsibilities increase. 

The Institution has been, we think, a disinterested 
work of faith from its first inception until now, and we 
thankfully acknowledge the very evident favor of Provi- 
dence far beyond the faith of any who have shared in 

* Eev. T. B. Lyman. 



r" 



m 

the work. So sensibly was the want of such schools 
felt by the Church in this Diocese, that in 1837 the 
Convention accepted the Report of a Committee which 
recommended the establishment of five Church Schools 
in the Diocese — all, however, to be of a preparatory 
grade. In the Convention of 1841, the Bishop announced 
that arrangements were well advanced for the opening 
of one school. The Convention thereupon adopted a 
suitable report and resolution; and these have sincebeen 
followed by an interest, which, if not as active and 
liberal as was anticipated, has still, under the Divine 
blessing, greatly aided in sustaining and advancing the 
work. Since 1842 the Convention of the Diocese has 
not deemed any further legislative action necessary. — 
Our aim and hope is to make our course throughout 
one that will not disappoint the reasonable anticipations 
of those who aided in founding the College. 

St. James's Hall opened in Oct., 1842, under the care 
of six officers, four of whom are still connected with it, 
and with fourteen pupils ; its first session of ten months 
closed the following July with 23 pupils. This number 
was about the halfof what I had been led to anticipate ; 
and not quite a fourth of what sanguine friends, little 
experienced in such matters, had confidently counted on. 
I need not now recur to what was one of the chief causes 
of this disappointment — the strange and inexcusable 
misapprehensions in some quarters of the aims of the 
Hall. But in spite of these and some other serious 
obstacles, the school went on, and in its second year 
nearly doubled its number. During this second year, in 
February, 1844, a successful effort was made to obtain 
a College Charter for the Hall, and on the 9th of April 
in that year the Institution was reorganized under its 
legal title and character as " the College of St. James." 
The motives which led to this measure thus early in our 
history were these. All parties concerned were anxious 



11 

to place the school on a firm basis, and to make it inde- 
pendent of the life or will of any individual. It was 
necessary, too, that some definite and systematic gov- 
ernment should be permanently provided ; and various 
concurring circumstances showed that the property 
invested ought to be promptly secured under the charge 
of a perpetual corporation. Besides, our pupils were 
advancing in years and learning, and if we desired to 
retain them long enough to complete a sound intellectual 
and religious training, it was evidently necessary that 
we should take our place among chartered Universities 
and be empowered in the usual way to confer academical 
degrees. Yet we were unwilling to exchange even the 
uncertain individual trust which then existed, for any 
corporate powers which might eventually work against 
the Church for whose service the school had been estab- 
lished. This objection was fully avoided in the very 
desirable charter given us by the state, while all the 
required advantages were secured. The Trustees of 
the College must, by the Charter, be always " members, 
and attached to the Protestant Episcopal Church." We 
asked this openly, and the state, with her usual wise and 
liberal policy to all bodies of Christians, at once granted 
it. Such is the only honest course for all parties in an}^ 
such measure. At the same time it ought to be distinctly 
understood, that such a charter is all that w^e received 
from the state. No endowment came with it ; none 
was asked or expected. 

During the third session, that of 1844 and '45, things 
went steadily on, and our increasing numbers proved to 
(13 the necessity of enlarged accommodations. It was 
not, however, until May, 1845. that the Real Estate of 
the College was deeded to the Trustees. This had to 
be done in order to secure the funds requisite for the 
proposed additional edifice, and as well as to make it 
prudent in the Trustees to erect any new building. The 



12 

deed was not, however, obtained, without the Trustees 
paying a large balance of the principal and interest due 
on the original purchase money as subscribed in this 
county. This deficiency arose from various causes, 
and but for providential resources might have seriously 
retarded our work. That difficulty surmounted, the 
present Grammar School was erected in the summer of 
1845 ; and in the autumn of the same year all the 
accommodations were called for. With slight variations 
our numbers have been steadily maintained since. We 
close this year with 70 pupils ; and our prospect for the 
next year is very encouraging.* The rapid multiplica- 
tion of Church Schools must make the progress of any 
one less striking ; but if, as it is hoped, the demand 
increase with the supply, the interests of the Church and 
her youth will be more effectually promoted. This 
Institution, however, as a College fully organized in all 
its departments, proposes to itself a higher work than 
that aimed at by most of the schools more or less con- 
nected with the Church. We recognise, too, a peculiar 
responsibility as resting upon us in consequence of the 
action of the Convention in the case of the College alone* 
This action, however, not only imposes a responsibility 
which we try to meet faithfully, but also gives this work 
here a character and claim among Churchmen ; these it 
has been and shall be our effort more fully to justify 
every year. 

A twelvemonth since we graduated our first class — 
consisting of but two members. A year hence we hope 
to graduate a second class of double that number.t We 
may, in future years, graduate classes somewhat larger ; 
we shall be well satisfied if the honors of the College 
should be always conferred on graduates,'in whose hands 
the intellectual and moral character of their Alma Mater 
will be as safe. 

* The sixth session closed July 27, 1848, with 89 pupils. 

t This expectation has been fulfilled : four were graduated July 27, 1848. 



13 

[Here, among some other remarks appropriate at that time, and spe^- 
cially suited to the audience then assembled, reference was made to a 
plan for a new College Edifice then and now much needed. Itseem^s 
right here to say that the plan, though postponed, has not been aban- 
doned. Its prosecution would have been attempted during the past 
year ; but the advice of some earnest friends, well informed in all such 
matters, led us to delay the effort to procure the donations needed, 
until an easier state of things prevailed in the commercial world.] 

And now let me notice some of the objections made 
to a college organized as this is, on the model of a vigo- 
rously governed Christian family. Some say our disci- 
pline is too strict. They do not mean more strict than is 
necessary to maintain order and morality ; but more 
strict than in most other colleges — more strict than most 
boys would themselves choose. And against what well- 
ordered family of your own would not the same objec- 
tion hold good ? Any faithful parent is deemed strict 
when compared with his careless neighbor ; and not one 
son in twenty but complains of the control of a con- 
scientious father or mother. The great aim of any 
such parent is to 'prevent evil by systematic care. So a 
school-government, to be efficient and safe, must seek 
to prevent rather than to punish evil. Prevention im- 
plies careful rules systematically carried out. These 
rules imply entire obedience on the part of the pupils. 
This duty of obedience arises out of the transfer of the 
parental authority, for the time being, to us ; and by this 
transfer we are not only authorized but obligated to use 
all that preventive vigilance which a good parent always 
exercises. Therefore, we are strict, but not severe. 
Good-natured, kind-hearted pupils, see and declare this 
now. And though the restless, those boys who most 
need such care, of course think differently, yet among 
even these there are very many, who, in maturer years, 
will bring their younger brothers and their own sons to 
schools disciplined as this is. They will have learned 
to estimate more justly the inconveniences and the 
benefits of the yoke, which, they will then say, it was 



14 

good for them to have borne in their youth. But still the 
objections will be renewed from other sources. So will 
it be to the end of time. The faults that require the 
check always object to it. And yet it is quite true that 
some boys pass years here without any reproof; and 
not a few go on without one unpleasant event in their 
whole stay. No human system can be perfect ; but 
excessive strictness is not the fault of ours. Parents 
send us their sons that they may have here, as far as 
possible, parental control continued. Our aim is to 
temper this control as much as we can by parental 
love. But few parents have seventy sons to govern, 
and therefore there are not many who can even imagine 
what are the necessary principles of government in so 
large a family. It would delight me to give up my 
place for a month or two to some of our critics ; they 
would criticise no more. 

Next, some say, we part with hoys too readily ; so 
readily, that there is a risk in sending a boy to us. — 
There is a risk in sending us a bad boy — no risk in 
sending us one who is not bad. But parents generally 
know very little about their sons' real character. If 
they, or his former teachers, through ignorance, (and 
sometimes not in ignorance,) recommend a boy — 
and we take none without a recommendation — if that 
boy prove himself untractable and immoral, what is to 
be done ? Shall we keep him here to overturn order and 
morality? If we do so, other parents will complain, and 
very justly. We must, therefore, part with him. We 
always do this as quietly as we can. But no matter 
why or how we do it, parents complain, charge us with 
injustice, and become open foes to the college. Five 
years' experience here has given us one solitary case of 
a parent, who, under such a trial, remained our friend. 
In all other cases decided, and often active hostility, has 
been the result of the removal of a boy. But let me 
give facts, otherwise it might be inferred that removals 
by way of discipline had been frequent enough to 



15 

require some defence. We have received here in all, 
one hundred and twenty boys in five years. Of these, 
four were not retained beyond their probation of two 
months. Eight were removed by our act, some in the 
way of discipline, but most of them as sources of moral 
corruption. Only one has incurred formal expulsion. In 
all, thirteen only out of one hundred and twenty have 
been removed by us or at our request — a number surpri- 
singly small, when compared with some stories that have 
been current.* It would be but fair to remember, that or- 
dinary prudence would prevent the needless removal of a 
boy from a school which depends on the number of its 
pupils for its support, and that Christian men would be 
restrained by their own conscience and the fear of God, 
from the wanton cruelty which may blight the hopes of 
a youth for both worlds. Common sense will satisfy 
every one, that if there be any reality in our promises to 
guard the morals of our pupils, we must sometimes part 
with boys ; and that when this is done, no matter how 
urgent the necessity nor how kind and considerate the 
manner of the removal, the boy's friends will complain; 
and that a candid and prudent man will not base his 
judgment of the case exclusively on the views and 
representations of those who imagine themselves ag- 
grieved. 

But then, says another, after all your promises, you do 
not exclude all bad hoys and had deeds from the College ; 
nor do the hoys always turn out well. No reflecting person 
would plead guilty to the folly of expecting that either 
good result could always be secured. Among so many 
boys, some who ought not, will enter in spite of all our 
precautions. And some will grow worse here, do what 
we may. In some, there are hidden seeds of inherited 
or other evil which will germinate anywhere. Some 

* During the sixth session twenty-five new pupils were received and none 
dismissed. As the character of an Institution for order and morality be- 
comes more fully established, fewer unworthy pupils v/ill be presented, and 
consequently the occasion for any extreme discipline will become more rare. 



16 

have a love for sin, which will send them fluttering like 
an insect from plant to plant in search of any little por- 
tion of poison to be found. But we promise not to leave 
a wicked nature to its own workings. We try to arouse 
a holy influence for good to work against the evil. And 
the effort is not vain. No better proof of this need be 
offered than the high and strong tone of virtuous feeling 
existing in the influential part of our College community- 
I am glad to be able to say that there is not one youth of 
them all, whose standing and influence among his com- 
panions is at all to be envied, who is not openly and 
decidedly on the side of virtue and morality. We say 
that this scheme of education is not impracticable ; that 
here it is, we think, fairly successful. We have never 
pretended that it could be unfailing in its effects. The 
fond anxiety of parents sometimes makes them act and 
talk as though they expected of us the infallible success 
which they despair of themselves. Sometimes we can- 
not succeed just because parents have already failed. 
They may have forgotten their duty, or but half dis- 
charged it ; or may have been thwarted in their efforts ; 
yet some such wonder why the teacher cannot do what 
the parent has failed to accomplish. There are excep- 
tions to the rule ; 3^et it generally holds true, that the 
most faithful educator must fail to amend the errors of 
the unfaithful parent. But we co-operate here with pa- 
rents, most of whom have not neglected their part. — 
Thus we can humbly, thankfully and confidently point 
to good results already attained as proof that a Christian 
School is not a vain fanc^^ And we can, besides, only 
pledge our faith that this school shall never be the home 
of known and unchecked sin. 

We sometimes hear it objected that our course of study 
is too long and severe. To this we answer, that it is not 
more so than that of our best Northern Colleges ; and 
that any course of study less complete and thorough 



17 

would be useless as a training of the mind. An educa- 
tion which costs little in the way of time or money is 
generally worth no more than its cost, and seldom as 
much. The work is one which can be accomplished 
neither by teacher nor pupil in a day. It must be allow- 
ed its fall period. A tree must have time to grow. You 
cannot force the plant beyond a certain limit. Nor can 
you make the twig a tree by giving it the name. So 
with the education of the mind. Academical degrees 
do not make a scholar. Time and toil are essential to 
his training. 

So, too, is expense : a cheap education is a very dear 
purchase, as most cheap things are. We offer education 
at a fair price.* We cannot give it for less ; and they 
who sometimes advise that we should do so, talk with- 
out sober calculation. We have no endowments on 
which to support Professors. We have no resource to 
meet academical and domestic expenses but the yearly 
earnings of the College. The cost of teaching and 
boarding our pupils is by no means all that we must 
meet. A large part of our outlay must go to secure that 
constant and careful supervision which we believe to be 
the only safeguard of any school from the^ disorder and 
vice which so generally mariv communities of the j^oung. 
Therefore, we know that the College gives the full worth, 
of what it receives ; and moreover, we know from care- 
ful inquiry, that the sum total of expenses here does not 
at all exceed the amount incurred at neighboring Col- 
leges — onegreat recommendation of which is their cheap- 
ness. But even, were it otherwise, it is true economy y 
though the cost in money be somewhat higher, to seek 
an education where it can be had with proper safe-guards^ 
for morality. 

But my remarks have already extended beyond the 

* The annual charge for each pupil is two hundred and t went} -five dollars, 
covering all expenses, domestic and academical. 



18 

limit I proposed to myself. I turn, then, to you my 
young friends, who are students in the College, and with 
especial pleasure and confidence to you who have this 
morning received* testimonials of merit, and I ask that 
in you, in your present and future course of life, the his- 
tory of your College may be honorably written and 
widely read. You are almost as deeply interested in 
its success as we are. Its high standing, fixed by your 
scholarship and character, will reflect honor back on 
you. You are to build up the reputation of your Alma 
Mater, and then cherish an honest pride in being her 
sons. You are to be youths and men of such real worth 
and solid attainments, that we will be able to point con- 
fidently to you as the living proof of the reality of our 
system — the irresistible answer to every objection. You 
here begin your part in building up St. James's. You 
need not wait for future years. Yet we look to the future 
of many among you with high anticipation. We believe 
not only that your life will be more useful, honored, and 
happy from your education here, but, besides, that you 
will then point with affectionate pride to the scholastic 
home of your early days. Only bear in mind the motto 
of your College, " Every good gift and every perfect gift 
is from above." From no other source may you hope 
to obtain such gifts. To no other end should you use 
them but the Glory of the Father of Lights. 

* Annually distributed to those who earn them. 



SHefmite anh ^nll)Oxitaiwc @:eacl)iug in tlje Beligiotis 
^bncatian of tlje ffioung. 



FIRST BACCALAUREATE, 

Thursday, July 30, 1846. 



Institutions, like individuals, have in their history 
days of very special interest — days long anticipated and 
long remembered. As such, we cannot but regard the 
present. We are now closing the fourth year of our 
academical being. We have just conferred on our first 
graduates that literary rank which we think they have 
earned by laying well the foundation of moral and intel- 
lectual worth. Very small indeed their number, yet 
sound, as we believe, in head and heart, we send them 
forth not only with our best wishes and prayers, but 
with confident hopes that their future life will prove that 
their four years of academical and religious culture have, 
by God's grace, stamped upon their whole nature a 
permanent character for good. x\s years roll on, we 
trust that days like this may often again present to us 
classes, increased indeed in number, and, in proportion 
to our growing facilities, more advanced in all the good 
that we here seek to confer, but still, disciples of the 
same true system of faith and morals, and ardent aspi- 
rants after the same noble end which has thus far 
been kept before their view. 

Note. Upon reading over' this address after an interval of two years 
it seems to the writer proper to say, that the topic of the address was 
at that time specially urged upon his thoughts by a friendly discussion with 
a very excellent parent, who (with most honest purposes) insisted upon 
controlling his son's religious course by the rules which the address attempts 
to refute. Such cases had occurred before, and have occurred since. This 



'^i- 



20 

To one marked feature in our system of religious 
training our own minds now naturally revert. " Our 
system," I say ; — not because it is our invention, nor 
even our selection, but because the Churck of God first 
made it our duty, and then experience and reflection 
have since made it to us a high and joyful privilege. 
To that feature in our system of training here, let me 
now direct the attention of those present. It is, I be- 
lieve, generally customary on these occasions for the 
Principal of the College to address his remarks more 
directly and practically to his students. This duty of 
parting advice has, however, been already discharged; 
and, therefore, I may be allowed, without impropriety, to 
.give another turn to the thoughts of the audience. 

I would define, then, the feature in our training refer- 
red to, as " the principle of definite and authoritative 
teaching in the religious education of the young." My 
proposition is that is right — that in the education of the 
young as religious beings, the teacher inculcate doctrines 
clearly defined ; that he speak as with an authority 
from above ; and that thus he may expect and claim for 
the truth he teaches an immediate entrance into the 
mind of his disciple ; so that that mind may be pre-oc- 

will explain the writer's choice of his subject, and the earnestness of expres- 
sion sometimes adopted. The address itself will sufficiently show that the 
principles advocated regard the training of the young ; not, as here defined, 
the investigation of tnith by the well-prepared adult. 

It might be said that the discussion is needless ; that it would be enough 
for us to say to any objectors, " We are ministers and teachers of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church, and of her Schools, and therefore, no other system 
could be honestly adopted by us." But is not more than this our duty ? — 
Would not this be to disregard the difficulties of some conscientious parents ? 
Ought we not for their own sake, and still more for their childi'en's sake, to 
remove their difficulties, if we can 1 The merchant may, if he please, do no 
more than exhibit his wares, and leave men to purchase or not, according to 
their tastes. In the merchandize of wisdom, charity imposes a different rule. 
She enjoins upon the minister of Truth to recommend it by every true argu- 
ment, and to remove, to the utmost of bis power, every doubt which might 
hinder the reception of the truth. Such are the feelings and views of duty 
suggested by the request which is sometimes made by very w^orthy parents ; — 
that we would accept the care of their sous, and train them well in morals 
and in the generally received doctrines of religion, but avoid giving them 
any bias, which, in maturer years, might influence their choice among the 
various religions communions and creeds of the day. To meet cases like 
this, was the motive which prompted the wiitiug of these pages. 



21 

cupied by the truth to the effectual and permanent 
exclusion of error.— If this proposition be admitted, 
then the teacher of religion and morals speaks as from 
God, and the disciple listens as to the messenger of 
God. Then there can be no call upon the young to 
postpone adopting a doctrine or obeying a precept with 
a view to future investigation ; compliance, not investi- 
gation, is the first duty. Then no doctrine or precept 
may be declined as less important, or as unessential ; 
for all alike are to be^egarded, for the present at least, 
as from above. The young disciple is told not to wait 
for more years and more knowledge, that he may judge 
and choose for himself, but to give himself up undoubt- 
ingly, head and heart, to" the system to which God has 
subjected him ; to believe implicitly and to practise 
confidently ; to plant the heel of faith on the neck of his 
self-sufficiency, and to feel that the nobleness of his 
nature is proven, not by doubting whether his God has 
ever met him, or when and how, but by trusting his God 
as He has deigned to meet him. Now this, though not 
an excessive, is a strong statement of the proposition. 
But 1 make it so, not without design. Stated less dis- 
tinctly, it would sound like a mere truism. To say 
merely, that on the whole the young should trust their 
guides, would be only repeating what men say every 
day, and what none would openly dispute. I choose 
the stronger mode of expression, because any other might 
fail to startle up the error I would refute. Now, the 
fashionable theory of the day on this point is, to speak 
plainly. Infidel. The practice, to be sure, is far better, 
but still sadly deficient — for no practice can be sound if 
the theory on which it is based, or by which it is ex- 
plained, be false ; as undoubtedly the prevalent theory 
of the religious education of the young is radically false. 
It must, therefore, corrupt the practice. And, though the 
most of those with whom lue are concerned would reject 
the naked theory, yet some of them do accept it, and 



^2 

few can escape its influence. That influence has, in 
some cases, impeded us in our efforts to fix in the minds 
of our pupils clear and operative principles of truth. 
We have had to deal with those who adopt the fancy 
that it is a wrong and an injustice to the young to mould 
their hearts and shape their creed after any very definite 
model ; that though Christianity is very valuable as an 
element of good in the individual and in the community, 
yet it is quite possible to communicate it without giving 
it any very marked character, leading it to be to each 
one pretty much what he would have it to be ; and in 
fact, that to do otherwise — ^to aim at a decided influence 
over the young conscience, and to stamp deeply, and, if 
we can, indelibly upon the heart and mind the definite 
lineaments of religious doctrine and principle, is a gross 
and unpardonable violation of the rights of conscience as 
ascertained in our favored age. 

This is the false theory I would reject. Nor is it pre- 
sented as a man of straw, to be set up and beaten down 
for our amusement. It is and has been to us here a 
painful reality. The avowed denominational character of 
the College secures us, though not wholly, from sharing 
the work of education with parents who consciously hold 
and openly avow this theory. But nothing can free us 
from the practical hindrances arising from the influence 
of this false principle over the minds of parents. Not a 
few who would make no active opposition, would hence 
at least give us no active sympathy in our efforts to mould 
and fix their sons' religious character. They have not 
themselves settled the principle one way or other. They 
will not quite reject our theory, but they doubt the ex- 
pediency of practising upon it so systematically, and not 
uncommonly end their difficulty, by saying, that it is a 
point which fathers may innocently leave to be settled 
by the mothers and the ministers. And yet I would not 
be misunderstood. We have great and yearly increasing 
reason to thank God for the kind of parents who send us 



23 

their sons. We are often repaid ten-fold for all our care, 
by the gushing gratitude of fathers' as well as mothers' 
hearts. Yet the theme before us may not be useless, if 
only some aid be given to those who feel and act aright, 
in developing and defending their own right principle ; 
and if but a word be said to make those reflect, whom 
we believe to be mistaken. 

And, first, let it be remarked that, theorize as men may;' 
on this matter, yet all agree in teaching positively, and 
on many points, definitely. All men have doctrines, 
whether true or false, which they hold as doctrines. 
They have, on some points, decided belief; and on these 
it is not in human nature to speak undecidedly. The 
very theory we are combating becomes to most who 
hold it, a reality. They have no doubt of its correct- 
ness. They speak confidently and are as ready as any, 
nay, the most ready of all, to denounce those who deny 
their belief. Like the old sceptical school of Philosophy, 
they confidently deny the certainty of anything, and fairly 
expose themselves to the same charge of gross inconsis- 
tency in declaring that it is certain that nothing is certain. 
Men will disclaim any such inconsistency, and, I gladly 
allow that, to some extent, they do reject it in their prac- 
tice. My desire is, to array their practice against their 
own theory and in favor of ours. We believe that there 
can be no effectual teaching that is not at once definite 
and confident ; that does not avow its right and pur- 
pose to pre-occupy the whole spiritual and moral nature 
from childhood onwards. They charge such a scheme 
with being bigoted, ilhberal, and hostile to the freedom 
of the conscience and intellect ; they declare that the 
child must be left uninfluenced, and they invoke the 
sternest opposition against our theory. And yet, who 
knows not, that in the very same hour they turn to their 
own children, and pupils, and dependents, and zealously 
strive to imbue their^minds with very decided opinions on 
religion, as well as on every other topic ; that they even 



24 

make an absolute essential of their very doctrine of indiffe- 
rency, and teach that it is essential that a man should 
hold that nothing is essential; or, to make the mildest 
possible statement of this inconsistency, good men talk? 
in this wild, unnatural way of every one, even the young, 
choosing independently and without bias ; and yet, just 
because they are good men, they teach most clearly and 
authoritatively what they believe to he truth. They have 
chosen some side in religion, and with the very breath in 
which they declare that all should be left free to think and 
determine for themselves, they labor also to fix the young 
Arminian or Calvinist immoveably in their own peculiar 
dogma. And they do but their duty, not as well as they 
might, nor by the best way, but still they act out their 
duty ; they only talk against it. An honest man ought 
to teach, and will teach what he honestly believes, in 
spite of any and all his theories to the contrary — we are 
glad that he does so. He enforces submission to autho- 
rity, and this is the great saving principle of the soul. 
He does the work, however he may fancy — or make 
others fancy — that it is not so. We thus may claim as a 
strong presumption in favor of the sounder theory, that 
even its opponents practise upon it ; that must be the 
true philosophy which nature compels all men equally to 
adopt. 

But the question arises — is not that abstinence from 
definite teaching, which most seem to ^lefei, practicablei 
though it be not in fact, practised ? We might reply — 
that were it practicable, men would exhibit as well as 
recommend it. But the reply may be more direct. The 
system of indefinite teaching is essentially an impossi- 
ble one. The shrewdest teacher of religion might safely 
be challenged to name a doctrine or precept which he 
can teach effectively to the young, unless he secure a 
hearty reception of it, as a necessary pre-requisite to its 
profitable trial. He must convince, Le., as the word 
really means^-he must conquer the understanding ; he 



25 

must, to use the plain and right words, prejudice the mind 
and imbue the conscience, before any good spiritual 
effect can follow. Nor can he enforce any one doctrine 
without involving in it many others beside. None can 
stand disjointed from the analogy of the faitt. Or if he 
could find some one such doctrine, all powerful, to reach 
the heart through the head, as the rationalism of the day 
proposes, would it be possible for him even then, to teach 
with earnestness, even this one doctrine, without violating 
those sacred principles of mental and moral freedom ? 
Are there not any who deny that very doctrine ? Does 
not their denial imply its doubtfulness ? Is it not at least 
a reason why the young disciple should not yet be too 
earnestly urged to receive the doctrine ? Is it right and 
fair to prejudice him, and so prob ably ^a: him on a point, 
which, if left unbiassed, he might never adopt? The 
favorite theory can return but one reply to such queries. 
And yet we are told, to teach " the great and leading 
truths of Christianity," as though in these you might consis- 
tently fix the yoilng mind, and only leave it free in minor 
matters ; as though there were any way of knowing 
what these choice truths are, save from the old creeds, 
which are yet to be allowed no authority, and which 
must tumble into unmeaning fragments if one article be 
denied ; and as though great and leading truths could 
possess the mind without irresistibly carrying it on to the 
reception of the whole system, of which, as their very 
name implies, these truths are the chief part. The thing 
is impossible. One doctrine rightly inculcated, prejudi- 
ces the mind. Teach but one truth as truth, and you 
are guilty of the pretended injustice. Let the boy receive 
but one article of the creed, as the profoundest of 
youthful philosophers must always receive it, on sheer 
authority, and his slavery is begun. But it is too 
awful a subject to dwell lightly upon. Such slavery 
of the proud and wayward intellect we reject not. 
It is slavery to God, but it is freedom for man. — 



26 

As the Church teaches us to say, " whose service is 
perfect freedom ;" or in the more forcible language of 
the original of that prayer, " cui servire est regnare." 
But there are besides, men who would be willing to 
have us onait all doctrines, and teach only morality. 
We are to enjoin individual and social duties — ^but to 
have nothing to do with creeds. Now, not to speak of 
the great, immeasurable distance between one system of 
morals and another ; of the fact, that what one man 
deems right or pronounces a duty, another stamps as a 
sin ; not to dwell on the notorious contradictions in re- 
gard to the morals of every day life ; assuming that all 
men agree in what is morality ; tell me by what motives 
or sanctions I may be allowed to urge the disciple to do 
his duty ? If I tell him that the penalty of sin is future 
and eternal death ; if I speak of the worm that never 
dies — of the fire that is never quenched, are there not 
in our land thousands ready to rise up and forbid my 
putting so gloomy a tenet into the young mind, for they 
have discarded it ? Or if I do no more than point out 
to my pupil the vengeance of Heaven against sin, as 
seen in the history of nations and individuals around us, 
there are yet many who would warn me not to be too 
presumptuous in asserting or interpreting so special a pro- 
vidence. And so, as in truth it is, faith and morals must 
perish together. Both must be taught in all their fullness, 
clearness and authority, or there is no effectual teaching. 
But I mistake, there is effectual teaching. The human 
mind is trustful. It will seek a teacher to follow and 
a faith to receive. Give it but an hour with a single 
fellow-mind, and it grasps the lesson it craves, no matter 
what, right or wrong, true or false ; this fills the void. 
Keep away the true teacher, or let him fail to do his 
whole duty to the boy, and the world all around him,* 
and his fleshly nature and the devil never absent, 
will be busy and successful. Teach nothing or teach 
but little, and every breath around will bring some- 



21 

thing to fill up the void, and the worst training will go on 
vigorously' under the mistaken idea that all training is 
suspended ; and the boy will arrive at manhood with 
opinions which he calls doctrines, and fancies that he 
deems truths, tenacious and hold enough, but without the 
modesty which the true discipline would have given him. 

What then — and the question is naturally and rightly 
put to us — what do we propose ? What is the training 
which parents are to seek for their children ? And where 
is it to be found? We answer, that we deem the true 
theory to be, that the young are to submit undoubtingly 
to their superiors ; that parents are, of course, their first 
and most authoritative guides ; and that next come those 
whom their parents may select as the educators of their 
children, and to whom they may delegate their autho- 
rity. Parents are, or ought to be, under the active 
influence of some system of faith. They were either 
trained in it, and afterwards enlightened and confirmed 
in it, or else they have been, or they ought to have been, 
led to adopt it by the course of God's providence and 
the power of His spiritual guidance. Parents have ac- 
quired, or ought to have acquired, by prayer and such 
study as their circumstances and attainments have allow- 
ed, an intelligent conviction that they are members of that 
body, and recipients of that faith which God has ap- 
pointed. I need hardly say, that for parents who are 
careless of all religious truth and duty — neither these 
nor an}' sound rules can be of any use. I speak of those 
who care for the souls of their offspring, because the}- 
have cherished some care for their own souls. Such 
parents are bound to put their children under the active, 
authoritative influence of their own well-defined princi- 
ples of faith and duty. The whole weight of parental 
love and authority ought to be heartily given in favor of 
that system. The teacher should be one whom parents 
can trust and work with ; and the child should feel that 
the parent does thus fully co-operate with the teacher. 



S8 

He should see and feel that to him the voice of authority 
comes united and clear from parents, ministers and teach- 
ers, and that thus he may recognize it, and it only, as to 
him the voice of God, to be heeded implicitly and gladly 
as the voice from heaven itself. 

Is it so, then, it may be asked, that truth is whatever 
^parents think it to be? By no means — ice believe reli- 
gious truth to be what our creeds define it to be. But, as it 
concerns the guidance of the young, we do say, that even 
in this late century parents are likely to know better than 
their children, or ought to know better ; that if parents do 
not assert their own authority, the children will not be 
likely to choose an}'' that is safer ; and that almost any 
one system is to be preferred to the rejection of all sys- 
tems ; or, in other words, the most deficient system is 
better than infidelity. But would we thus speak in 
counselling a parent who did not adhere to the church 
and the faith we love ? Undoubtedly, — ^were he to ask 
what, with his present light, is his duty, we should lay 
down this very rule ; while, of course, if he would allow 
it, we would try to give him more light. If- he came 
here and asked us to educate his son, in all else as we 
thought right, but in religion as he thought right, the task 
would be declined. We could not, as honest men — as 
responsible to God, undertake what we coidd not and 
would not do. But when the parent is careless on the 
subject, we regard ourselves as in this matter the friends 
whom Providence provides to fulfil the parent' s part. For 
the most part, however, only the sons of churchmen pre- 
sent themselves — and then the path is clear before us. 
We teach with authority — we seek to inspire confidence 
in ourselves indeed — but still more, in the Church and her 
Lord whose commission we bear. We proclaim that 
this is our system — that we repudiate the false, delusive 
theory opposed to it — that we educate the conscience and 
soul with the confidence of men, who rest their own faith 



29 

on firmer grounds than their own private uncontrolled 
judgment. Notin self-confidence, but in self-submission 
to the authority above us, we promise to " teach that 
we do know and testify that we have seen." 

Such a course of duty seems to me too evidently right 
to need much direct defence. As I have said, all men 
give it the support of their practice, and oppose it only 
by their fancies. I had, however, designed to dwell 
here, had I time, upon thoughts like these ; that the young 
are poisoned by the infidelity of doubtful teaching, and 
feel, though they cannot define it, a deep distrust of 
that revelation which they are told is, after all, but half- 
revealed ; that if you w^ould fix faith as an elemental, 
vivifying principle in the soul, you must teach the very 
child with all the earnest confidence of the prophet — if 
you do otherwise he may never, as a believer, attain the 
great blessing of an assurance incapable of doubt ; that 
the active influence of positive truth must be the only 
safeguard against the no less active influence of direct 
falsehood — that the heart and mind are never neutral 
ground ; and that a belief of the whole creed can result 
only from early training in every part of it. I had pre- 
pared to press these points at length, as being all of 
them of great interest and importance to my subject, but 
I find that by doing so I shall occupy too much time. 
It is, however, but due to ourselves here to add, that 
though the great foundation principle of Christian edu- 
cation has not been here urged, the church's doctrine of 
regeneration in baptism, yet we never forget it. On the 
present occasion I have thought it well to advance only 
such arguments as all men alike must admit ; but it is, 
when we look upon the young as the members of Christ 
and the children of God — as having their character and 
allegiance unalterably fixed by Him who commits them 
to us, to be trained for Himself; it is then that we feel 
most bound and most fully authorized so to instruct our 



3a 

pupils, that, like Timothy of old, each of them may ever 
" continue in the things which he has learned, and has 
been assured of, knowing of whom he has learned them ; 
and tlciBX/rom a child he has known the Holy Scriptures, 
which are able to make him wise unto salvation through 
faith in Jesus Christ." 

There is, however, one objection which a thoughtful 
mind might make to this scheme of rehgious training. 
If this be a sound rule for all, and if all adopt it, will not 
the parent, who honestly holds a wrong creed, fix his 
child in his own error ? How can one taught from the 
first to believe confidingly, ever arrive at the conviction 
that he has been wrong ? I reply, by using his own 
judgment, when it has become fully prepared for its 
proper exercise, by^ being well chastened and guided 
and fully enlightened and informed, so as to know the 
real worth of arguments and the sacredness of long- 
established authority. By no other discipline can the 
judgment ever be prepared to guide its possessor. The 
able general had to begin by being the obedient subor- 
dinate. The spirit of faith is essential to the prosecution 
of the truth. No might of intellect, no mass of knowl- 
edge, will do any thing without humble faith. But such 
faith will do much, almost by itself. If the early creed 
be truth, faith will only learn it and love it better day 
by day. If the early creed be not truth, an humble 
faith will be led by God, to Whom, and not to self that 
faith bows down, by paths unsought, to know Him 
more truly as He is. Or if He see fit not thus to shed 
the light of full knowledge on the humble soul in her 
present state of being, who can doubt that His mercy 
will the more richly reward her trust there where only 
the full rewards of our probation are to be given ? A 
sound faith can be the blessing of none but a believing 
spirit ; and a believing spirit must be a thoroughly sub- 
missive one. Even were it possible for the proud and 



31 

self-sufficient mind to apprehend intellectually every 
doctrine, it would gain but little. The truth, to work out 
its full blessing, mustfirst possess the heart, and through 
that sanctify the head. Such were the wise teachings of 
Plato of old, whose words we will adopt and Christian- 
ize. " Wait patiently," he said to his disciple, " learn- 
ing from others, most of all from the Law giver," — the 
one fionoderns provided for us all ; adding this most im- 
portant injunction of personal piety as requisite to the 
attainment of truth — " during all the time dare not one 
act or thought of impiety towards God."* 

But how are we to regard the professions of parents 
and teachers who undertake to teach religion and train up 
Christians in a way which will satisfy every one ? Do 
we charge such professions with being insincere ? By no 
means ;— -men do thus delude themselves. But their 
promises are none the less mere fiction. The late excel- 
lent Dr. Arnold, of England, strikingly illustrated this. 
He had a great and, no doubt, an honest dread of his 
boys adopting opinions on his authority, and yet on the 
very page on, which his admiring biographer tells us 
this, he also unwittingly adds, that his boys would per- 
sist in trusting and following their good teacher in spite 
of all his warnings. So it must always be. Any man 
worthy to be an educator will impress himself upon the 
minds and hearts of his best pupils. " No sectarian- 
ism " is a very popular cry, but like many others, it is de- 
lusive. It must end in unbelief, or in concealed (and often 
unconscious) dogmatism. Either Christianity is never 
named, or it presents itself in the form of the teacher's 
opinions, all the worse for being but half-disclosed. If 
a good man ever make such professions, he is always 
sure to violate them ; their fulfilment is an impossibility. 
The mere recital to the outward ear of the words of the 
Bible, will not renew and instruct the sinful child of 

*Prof. Lewis's " Plato contra Athees," pp. 12 and 116. 



32* 

Adam. Faith comes not by such hearing* The child 
will ask and learn something of their meaning from his 
teacher, and the first slight comment is " sectarian." 
Let the representatives of any dozen of our many de- 
nominations listen for an hour to the Bible-class exercise 
of one of these impartial teachers ; and if he taught at 
all, one half would be offended by doctrines they reject. 
Our higher Institutions and Colleges generally make 
some such professions. They teach religion and have 
religious worship, but all creeds are welcome and all 
are safe in their walls. Most of our states by their laws 
forbid any other profession, and deny corporate and 
academical powers to any denominational College. And 
yet what is the fact ? It would be hard to point out a 
College in our land where a sectarian character is not'^as 
well defined as if it were painted upon its walls. I can 
speak from accurate knowledge of the Colleges of New- 
York. That great state will not charter a College for 
anything more definite than *' Education," it forbids 
the insertion even of the wide word ''Christian," and yet 
every College in that state is as openly and effectually 
controlled by some one denomination as if its charter 
had fixed its creed. Nay more — every one knows be- 
forehand that this is to be so ; — -that the Trustees are to 
be mostly (not all — that would be too open) of one 
denomination ; they are to be tied up to the choice of 
officers of that creed by conditional donations of prop- 
erty ; and everything is to be so arranged that the pre- 
ponderance of the chosen faith may be secured, though 
the statute-book scouts any such scheme as subversive 
of all freedom of conscience. The same facts are, to a 
great extent, true of Pennsylvania. Our own state, we 
rejoice to say, is more honest and more Christian. She fa- 
vors no one form of faith more than another, but she leaves 
all free. She does not force good men who seek to train 
her youth, to do so by a course which is not dishonest, 
only because it is open. We have thus been enabled to 



33 

act out our part and design openly from the first. We 
are chartered as a College of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, and as such we have always proclaimed our- 
selves. We receive the young of every faith if parents 
will send them. But we teach but one faith. We do 
indeed, in this matter, only what all others are doing ; 
but we give full notice of our design. We are very far 
from telling our pupils that all piety and virtue is restric- 
ted to the members of our own communion; but we 
inculcate upon them the duty of deriving all their lessons 
of truth and duty from the Church which we train them 
to love and to trust confidingly as long as they live. 
And now, could my voice reach the parents of all our 
pupils, present and future, I would earnestly press upon 
them the duty of training the spirits of their children on 
the sacred principle of earnest, authoritative teaching. 
I would beg them to commit their children to our care 
only when fully satisfied that we are qualified and 
authorized to continue the same sound system of train- 
ing — and then to commit them to us confidingly, as the 
sworn servants of Christ's Holy Church. We have — 
we desire no license in our own belief — we dare not, on 
our responsibility to lawful authority, on earth and in 
heaven — we dare not use any license in our teaching. 
We must answer to a present tribunal ; we must answer 
to that Great Tribunal, from whose decision there can, 
forever, be no appeal. 

And to you, beloved youths, who have now received 
our formal and public approval, — and to you all, who 
are 3^et to labor for the same honor, let me recommend 
with all fervor this truth — that you must first believe 
before you can know. You must believe confidingly, if 
you would know the truth to any good and saving pur- 
pose. You will meet disguised as well as open scepti- 
cism—in early youth as well as in later life. You will 
meet those who will tempt your pride by bidding you 

3 



1 



34 

believe only that, whose proofs you can now weigh, and 
whose meaning you can now fully comprehend. But 
ever remember that such a principle is the essence of 
infidelity. Tell the scoffer that you have been too highly 
blessed to need such lessons- — that you are too wise to 
regard them. Tell him that you now believe because you 
have never doubted — that you glory in the thought that 
your faith began from the lessons of your infancy, taught 
by the lips of parental love and piety — that you will 
not shut your eyes on the light of heaven, whose first 
gleam shone on your soul's safe path, farther back 
than your memory can carry you, whose brightness 
shall illumine your spirit with daily growing clearness 
on her heavenward way, upward and onward, until faith 
itself shall be lost in eternal vision ! Engrave indelibly 
upon your hearts the motto* of your College — na^a^omg 

ayaOri Kai nav Soprjua rsXeiov avcodev eort— " Evcry gOod gift and CVery 

perfect gift is from above," — and cometh down from the 
Father of Lights — with whom is no variableness — no 
shadow of turning. 

* See the Seal on the title page and the appendix to this pamphlet. 



Uealittt of QLl)axatUx dsBzniial to Moral jBeantM anb 

(BoohntBQ, 



SECOND BACCALAUREATE, 

Thursdat, July 27, 1848. 



The class which we have now graduated is the second 
which has been prepared for their academical degrees 
in the College. Two years since, our first class of two 
members completed their undergraduate course ; this 
year four young gentlemen have in your presence receiv- 
ed their first degree in arts. We do not anticipate the 
graduation here of classes much larger than this — cer- 
tainly not at any very early period. There are various 
reasons which will tend to make the number of our 
graduates not so large as that in similar Institutions ; 
but they are at the same time reasons which must create 
a strong and just presumption, that the few who gradu- 
ate have formed a solid and permanent character as 
students, alid as upright men. Certainly it is our high 
privilege now, as two years since, to say that our satis- 
faction in conferring academical degrees is not marred 
by any doubt that the intellectual attainments to which 
we have contributed, and to which we now certify, will 
be devoted to the good of mankind and to the service 
of the Church and nation. To believe that we are 
adding good men to the ranks of the educated, must 
always be a satisfaction of the purest and rarest kind. 

But a custom, common though not universal in Col- 
leges, and into which, it seems, we are here falling, calls 



36 

upon me now to take a further share in the duties of the 
day. On former occasions, liberty was taken in the 
addresses of the Rector to engage the thoughts of the 
audience with the principles and history of the Institu- 
tion. Let me now offer some remarks which may be of 
use chiefly to the new graduates and their recent com- 
panions in the College classes. Where constant moral 
and religious instruction is one chief aim and duty, not 
in the pulpit only, but in the class-room and in the 
familiar intercourse of every day, few novel topics can 
remain specially appropriate to occasions like this. One 
such has, however, occurred to me. 

Those who live among the young, see human nature 
free from many of its usual disguises. Not undisguised 
indeed, for the "apron of fig leaves" was assumed by 
man once for all. Neither young nor old ever abandon 
it. But self-control and long habit are essential to the 
disguise which most maintain in later life, and which 
we all agree to call prudence and a proper reserve. 
The young, especially when thrown together in a com- 
munity, act themselves out. Nor must any of them smile 
at such an assertion. I do not mean that they tell us 
all they think or do ; or that we pretend to know all in 
its details. And yet I repeat it — the young act them- 
selves out. Ordinary acuteness and some experience 
make any man able to read the young with whom he 
has close associations much better than men read each 
other. And when it is one's duty in these circumstan- 
ces to train these youths, to awaken and enlighten their 
consciences and form their habits and tastes, and the 
aim is ever in sight to make honest, true, real men of 
them, there is a thought which often intrudes itself; 
most often in those cases where many noble elements of 
character are seen, and yet the result in the way of 
fixed principle is very doubtful. The thought I allude 
to is this — that Reality is the great thing needed to make 



37 

the character which education aims at ; and that want 
of reality is the great defect in not a few who are forever 
exciting and disappointing hopes which they might fulfil, 
if they valued reality within them as much as they value 
show, and seeming, and reputation. The resolve to he-) 
not to seem, would be the making of many a one who 
comes to little at last. The fault is visible as well in 
adults. How rare a thing is a real man ! How attrac- 
tive and influential is such an one, even in spite of some 
faults ! I am not contrasting truth with falsehood, nor 
honesty with fraud, nor sincerity with hypocrisy, but 
am saying that among true, honest, sincere people, such 
as most may be, there may be found more vanity, more 
unreality of character, than we are in the habit of allow- 
ing. It is certainly true of the young, that the first and 
chief thing they generally need is this conviction of the 
danger of seeming to be what they are not — of thinking 
themselves to be something they are not — of aiming at 
name and character — of conforming to hollow, fictitious 
rules — of satisfying themselves with embodying the fic- 
tion which false rules and false society call excellence 
and right ; the danger of not being what they would 
seem — of not knowing what they are — of not scouting 
the falsehood of show and fashion, and scorning a name 
held at the cost of the reality. 

I repeat that this is probably quite as true of adults. 
A community of boys, at all well-ordered, is as good as 
a community of men. Boys are not behind men in virtue 
as they are in intellect. The average of virtue among 
boys is probably no less, and the average of faults no 
greater, than among men. The difference is, that faults 
and virtues come out in youth irregularly and freely, 
without the disguise for the one or the moulding for the 
other, which maturer reflection gives. Faults seem greater 
and virtues see7n less in youth than in age, while the 
reverse is often the fact. The aim of education is to 






38 

furnish to the young those helps which the adult is sup- 
posed to be able to furnish to himself; to correct the 
vice and strengthen the virtue in the only period in 
which it can be done well. 

Now, one want in our nature, which, in working for 
the young, we are made to feel most deeply, is the want 
of reality. They live too much in a mist about their 
real character. If you scatter the mist they will gather 
it anew around them. Vanity is written upon too much 
of what they regard as principle. Duty is too often a 
fiction. Knowledge of duty they think they have, be- 
cause they can debate about it. Moral strength they 
exhibit by their boasts of it ; truthfulness by the energy 
with which they protest against the idea that they could 
violate truth. It is to be assumed, as a matter of course, 
that they are what they claim to be. If facts to the con- 
trary ungraciously obtrude themselves, why such facts 
must be explained away into fictions, so that their fictions 
may be received as facts. Either such and such a fault 
could not, and therefore was not committed by them ; or 
if it has been, there must have been, and therefore there 
were some peculiar circumstances which changed its 
usual character, or some excuses and palliations which 
render the fault quite pardonable, or even amiable. 
Nay, it is common to see this illusion in young people, 
(perhaps not exclusively in them,) that though certain 
things, deeds, words, and the like, do most certainly 
prove moral wrong in others, yet not so in me, says the 
one involved. In me they somehow change their nature 
and character ; they do not taint me ; I purify them. 
Or, though I do a vicious thing, yet it is no vice of mine. 
Once done it does not belong to me, as I grant it would 
and does to others. No matter what my acts, I am still 
true, and honorable, and virtuous, and trustworthy as 
ever! Now this may sound extravagant — but it is the 
naked truth of our daily experience. An experience, 



39 

remember, not among those, whom, by the common 
measure, we would decide to be false and deceitful, but 
an experience had to some extent among all, and to the 
full extent of my language, among some whom we hope 
yet to see side by side with the foremost in moral worth. 
I am not speaking at all of wilful hypocrites — of those 
whose professions spring from a conscious purpose to 
deceive — whose assertions of honesty, like all sounds 
from hollow vessels, ring the loudest. I refer now to 
others — to those who are unreal, not wilfully deceitful ; 
and to these, the greatest number of youth any where, 
do I desire now to say — open your eyes to the fact that 
you do lack truthful reality, and try to acquire it. 

I say truthful reality ; and though I know that I am 
not chasing a phantom, yet I feel the difficulty of defin- 
ing in positive terms the thing I commend. I have to 
use some negatives. I do not mean mere truth, the 
hatred and avoidance of falsehood. This is a part of 
this reality, not all of it. Truthfulness comes nearer the 
idea. Yet, if any have not the most sensitive scrupulous- 
ness about truth-telling and truth-acting, they must get 
it before they can hope that reality is begun in them. 
The youth or man is not often found who is as scrupu- 
lous as he ought to be about truth. Besides mistakes 
and involuntary errors, there are hundreds of ways in 
which truth may be violated by those who think them- 
selves honest. There are many mistakes in narrative, 
and many hindrances to the fulfilment of promises, which 
a thorough scrupulousness would avoid. There is often 
needless acquiescence in the secrecy of others, or a cul- 
pable silence when facts are misapprehended. And this 
is true of those who are ranked among the ^' honest." 
But truth and truthfulness, sensitive to a degree which 
knowing ones will laugh at, is the first element in sound 
real character. It is the only centre around which every. 



40 

thing may revolve in due and safe order. It is in the 
young the token and promise of virtue — a token never 
to be dispensed with and one which, one may almost say, 
never fails of its fulfilment. In the adult, such truthful- 
ness is a test you are never safe in neglecting, and never 
unsafe in trusting. Such truthfulness will never commit 
the slightest error designedly, and will never allow an 
involuntary error to remain uncorrected. It will not only 
shun every mode of deceiving, but will have no rest while 
any mistaken impression remains uncorrected ; truth not 
merely as the law which restrains our communications 
with one another, but as the principle of the inner man, 
the element pervading and imbuing the whole man — this 
is truth. It is the to a\r,e£vsLv* of the best of Greek philoso- 
phers ; and the sense in which Divine Philosophy speaks 
of truth in the inward parts ; not the mere utterance of 
truth — but truth subjective, within us, that of the soul, 
the feeling, rather than truth of expression ar of science. 
A philosopher may define and enunciate truth, who has 
no truth in his soul ; another may feel and hold the truth 
— its life — within him, who has not science to exhibit the 
doctrine. In this sense the highest and purest truth may 
exist in the child or the peasant, while the sage has no 
truth in him. Now, such inward truthfulness is the only 
spring from whence can flow reality of character ; that 
reality which brings the man or boy into real contact with 
those around him, and makes all feel that they are listen- 
ing to and dealing with the man himself and not with bis 
mask. It is this alone which makes the ruler, or teacher, 
or parent, or friend, really influential for good. Even a 
deficient practice will not make the precept powerless, if 
the hearer knows that the heart of the man utters what 
that heart believes, and means, and strives to fulfil. 
But through lack of this only reality, truthfulness of the 
soul, words are lifeless seeds, and the hearts thev fall 

* Vide Professor Lewis's Plato, p. 97. 



41 

upon are barren. To this effect is the language of 
Wordsworth. He asks — 

Who can reflect, unmoved, upon the round 
Of smooth and solemnized complacencies. 
By which in Christian [men] from age to age 
Profession mocks performance. Earth is sick, 
And heaven is vs^eary of ****** hollow words.* 

My meaning may be further illustrated by alluding to the 
characters we actually bear among others. We all pass 
for somewhat different from what we are. In many 
points friends do us more than justice. They perhaps 
believe us to be what we are not. We know they do so ; 
we see their over-estimate, and possibly do not dishke it 
or object to it. Or our disclaimer is faintly made and 
wins us still more repute for modesty. Or that denial 
is earnestly made ; but we detect ourselves taking some 
satisfaction in the thought that it is not wholly credited. 
At any rate we may have a good name ; a better one, 
we are sure, than we would have if all within us were 
known. It may be not more beyond our due than our 
neighbor's good name is beyond his due. Still it is more 
than our due. Yet we mean to be and are honest. Our 
honesty, however, is perilled by circumstances around 
us. To young or old — in public or in private, this may 
prove a snare. We are taken to be in any point more or 
better than we are, and we submit to the erroneous esti- 
mate, perhaps, as a necessity. We smile at the mista- 
ken complacency with which others take the high place 
which some circumstance or partiality gives them in 
their own little circle, while we may acquiesce in some 
similar mistake regarding ourselves. To place ourselves 
before others in a true light, to receive no more than we 
believe to be honestly our due, may not always be possi- 
ble ; but we ought always desire and aim to do it, and 
to feel uneasy in being favorably mistaken. Nor is any 
station, or calling, or age exempt from the snare alluded 

* Excurs. bk. 5 : 7. 



42 

to. A man may think himself very honest, and yet too 
readily appropriate to himself, what a little reflection 
would show him was given in mistake, or at any rate 
was a compliment to his place or duties. Self-know- 
iege may go far to spoil the gratification, but self-deceit 
will still accept its portion of unmerited praise. In this 
way the circle of partial friends may attribute more 
learning or wisdom, or moral excellence or liberality, or 
benevolence or self-sacrifice than is at all due ; and the 
flattering opinion be too feebly corrected by us. The 
good name offered is perhaps no more than we think our 
circumstances need ; otherwise duty could not be done. 
Or if we deserve less credit, so does our neighbor. Is 
it not possible thus to become less sensitive as to the 
reality of our character, and more careful of its appear- 
ance than is safe ? So that the loss of good name, or the 
shame of exposure, or even the charge of inconsistency, is 
worse to us than the secret sense of error ? We become 
unreal, almost in spite of ourselves. Against this we 
must struggle ; or else with the reality of character will 
also perish the efficiency which at first proved its worth. 
Speak well of us whoever may, we must see the truth. 
If many praise, the more reason then to heed the words 
of the few who condemn. Slander usually exaggerates, 
but does not invent. It gives useful hints to an honest 
man. 

So we may turn to our use the appearance we are 
somehow made to assume. Whatever virtues are by 
an}'- attributed to us, we may conclude are felt to be 
needed in our place and circumstances. These, then, 
we should cultivate. To disclaim them is not all of our 
duty. We must not strive to guard appearances ; nor 
talk as though less should be looked for ; we should try 
to bring ourselves up to the mark — to become what we 
seem, or ought to seem to be ; and what our social rela- 
tions or official obligations induce and entitle men to be- 
lieve us to be. 



43 

It need hardly be said, that to be real, a virtue is needed 
for which, it is said, the ancients had no name, because the 
precise idea was not of human devising — the virtue of hu- 
milily. It will aid us in doubting the good, and regarding 
the evil that men tell of us. It will detect a large admixture 
of evil in what has met unmingled praise, and will ex- 
tract from the venom of slander some wholesome medi- 
cine for hidden moral disease. Pride does just the con- 
trary. It believes all that adulation or partiality says> 
and thinks the half not told ; while it so earnestly resents 
the imputation of evil, that it ends in claiming a double 
share of the opposing virtue. 

And yet, reality of character requires what sometimes 
seems the opposite of humility — a quality much boasted 
but little possessed — inde'pendence. Real virtue must 
come from within ; mock virtue may spring from love of 
praise or fear of blame. To such motives we cannot — 
ought not to be wholly indifferent ; but we may be too 
much governed by them. To be careless of what others 
may think or say of us, is wrong. No man has a right 
to disregard his reputation. In this, others as well as 
himself have an interest and a property. No one stands 
alone. Nor has any one the power to fix the rule by 
which others must judge. No one, therefore, has the 
right to disregard appeal ances. When, therefore, merely 
our pleasures or tastes are concerned, we ought to sub- 
mit to ask, what will people say of this or that ? It is ob- 
stinacy and self-will to say, I will do as I please; and ac- 
cordingly you will find that they alone talk thus whose 
resolution sufiices only for the pursuit of their own plea- 
sures, and fails them when the discharge of duty involves 
a painful struggle. So far w^e are to avoid the very ap- 
pearance of evil. But beyond this, it is otherwise. 
What is right is to be determined by a higher law than 
the opinions of others. The motive power must be more 
real than the desire of approbation; the sustaining power 



must be more stable than the continuance of approbation. 
All this requires practice and experience, and their good 
fruits — calmness and prudence. It does not fall within 
my purpose to show how the lack of true independence 
is the source of the errors of many who do not see or 
allow their own weakness. Instances of this we all see 
daily. Known duty quite neglected, or but half-done, 
or done in secret, through a weak fear of what others may 
think or say of it ; good principles secretly loved — but 
openly laughed at, because others laugh at them ! 0> 
it is a sad and frequent sight — a youth, capable of high 
acts of duty — ^yet, driven by mere fear, to smother his 
best feelings and sin against his preceptors, his parents, 
his own conscience and his God, because he cannot defy 
the sneer of some whom he secretly despises. 

But I care rather to point out the more subtle influ- 
ence of an excessive regard to appearances — an influ- 
ence which works deeply against real principle in the 
hearts of the virtuous. They live among the virtuous 
and rightly desire their esteem. But the desire may be 
too strong, too exclusive, too nearly the sole or chief sup- 
port of virtue. It may rightly serve, like the staff*, to steady 
feeble footsteps ; it must not be the strength to move by 
Nor is it a staff* to be too heavily leaned on. How much of 
any good deed has sprung from love of praise, or how 
far it would have been changed if no such reward had 
been in view, is not an easy thing for any one to decide. 
How far virtue carries us, and where love of praise 
takes us up, would often be a wholesome inquiry. Here 
is peril — all the greater from the fact, that it is right to 
desire the regards of the virtuous. God implants the de- 
sire in us as a help to duty : but it must not be the mo- 
tive or the measure of duty. Conscience must be culti- 
vated so as to be able to decide and impel without any 
such aid. Otherwise our virtue will become less real — 
more hollow every day. We will allow ourselves to 






45 

receive more credit than is our due. We will gradually 
forget how little our due is. Weakening principle and 
growing vanity will be the result. A most subtle selfish- 
ness and cowardice will grow up. Appearances will be 
maintained, but reality will die out. An exterior, felt by 
us to be unfair, will be more carefully regarded than that 
honest reality of principle within, which only can make 
us good men, useful men, and true men. The remedy 
is this. Let God and your own consciences be the judges 
to which you make your hourly appeals. Keep all other 
appeals in the background. Try yourselves more by 
your private life — that which no one else knows, than 
by that which others judge by. Bishop Jeremy Taylor 
says, truly — " He that does as well in private, between 
God and his own soul, as in public, in pulpits, in thea- 
tres and market-places, hath given himself a good testi- 
mony that his purposes are full of honesty, nobleness, 
and integrity." " The breath of the people," he adds, 
*' is but air, and that not often wholesome." Nor is it — 
real virtue stifles and grows faint if it breathe it too much- 
It may exhilarate for a time, but it leaves afterwards the 
sickening sense of a hollow hypocrisy, for which the 
honest man will loathe himself in secret. Live, then, 
before your conscience. Let conscience people your 
area of action with the spectators whose applause you 
seek. The great philosopher as well as orator of Rome, 
may have felt the truth of his words all the more be- 
cause of his own vanity, when he wrote " Nullum thea- 
trum virtuti conscientia majus est"* — "Virtue can have 
no theatre greater than conscience." I may add, that 
there is no theatre besides in which our deeds and words 
will not become too much the acting of a player's part. 

There is but one thought more which I will dwell 
upon. It seems like a mere truism, when Bishop Butler 

* Cicero Tusc. Qusest., 2 : 26. 



46 



writes,* " Things and actions are what they are, and the 
consequences of them will be what they will be ; why 
then should we wish to be deceived ?" But this is a 
truism often denied. All deny it — the young certainly 
do. We often hear them say, almost in so many words, 
" Things and actions are not what they are, and the 
consequences of them will not be what they will be." 
This illusion has already been spoken of — that though 
" things and actions are what they are" in any one else 
— ^yet not so in my case, says the youth very often. There 
is perhaps not one fault or misdemeanor which a young 
man may commit, which some will not find a way of 
excusing in themselves and calling by names so har- 
monious, that ere they are done the fault has changed 
into something very like a virtue, in the youth who is 

arguing. The thing may be wrong even in him ; but 

and then follows such cogent logic of excuses and circum- 
stances and innocent meanings, that you are quite ready 
to hear the next plea prove the thing quite meritorious ! 
I speak in most sober earnestness. We deal with such 
cases daily — those who can see right and wrong clearly 
enough in others ; who claim very earnestly the character 
of all or most that youth should be ; who make the 
claim sincerely too ; while their daily life furnishes facts 
to the contrary. But facts against ourselves are apt not 
to be stubborn things. Each case is explained away 
most satisfactorilv. It could not be made more clear 
than it is, that this or that wrong thing was the merest 
result of circumstances, and that there is no fear of its 
recurrence ; that it is not the genuine fruit of the inner 
character nor any index to it. And so it is that this 
illusion blinds the young (nor them alone) to the want 
within them of truth or integrity, or honor or kindness, 
or fidelity. Here the seeming may not be in the eyes 
of others, but it is the more vain and perilous false 

* Sermon on the Character of Balaam. 



47 

show before our own eyes. More effort is made to 
mystify oneself and to refute the conviction which friendly 
advice is striving to produce, than would amply suffice 
to remove the fault. In all ages, especially in youth, 
there is a tendency to put away from oneself the 
conviction of inward grave deficiency, of which facts 
ought to leave no doubt. Self paints its own likeness, 
and insists that it is and must be correct, no matter how 
many proofs to the contrary. The remedy is this — learn 
to believe that you have serious faults, and that they are 
the unerring indications of what is within. Call your 
own acts and words and habits by true and plain names ; 
such as you allow are fairly applied to the cases of your 
neighbors. " Things and actions are what they are ;" 
and learn to know that the seeds of youth, small as they 
seem, contain the germ of all that follows. You may 
devise a false system of morals, but you cannot effect a 
false system of consequences. Gentle names will not 
prevent harsh results, nor will they correct wrong prin- 
ciples within. One may amuse and deceive himself, 
but the sin will bear its own fruit notwithstanding. 
Reality, then, in this particular, — seeing your own faults, 
calling them by plain names, recognising in them true 
signs of what you are, and that these faults, so far as 
they go, are the same as the errors and crimes which 
you see are destroying so many around — this truthfulness 
with 3^ourself is indispensible in making your character 
real. And such reality^ believe me, will be the surest 
guaranty of a life virtuous, not in seeming only, but in 
fact. 

I know not how I can better conclude this address to 
you all, young gentlemen — especially to you who have 
now ceased to be our pupils, than by proposing as its 
title one of the most expressive words with which your 
Greek studies have familiarized you. I tried to think of 
some one word in our own language which would express 



4$ 

fny idea, but none occurred to me. I wished to impress 
the thought of virtue beautifid because of its reality ; lovely 
in appearance because real in its nature. -KaKoKayaQia — 
beauty and goodness inseparably united ; springing each 
from the other — the moral state and appearance of the 
upright man. -Ka\oKayaeia seems to me the very word 
needed. He who exhibits virtue in a graceless form, 
belies her scarcely less than he who puts show in the 
place of reality. Goodness and loveliness belong to- 
gether ; neither can exist apart from the other. Moral 
goodness must always be beautiful. Moral beauty can 
never clothe anything but moral goodness. Bend your 
efforts to the reality, and the loveliness which belongs to 
it will appear of itself. Desire to exhibit the loveliness 
of goodness, not for your own sake or praise, but for 
the sake of virtue and of her One Fountain, and you will 
avoid needless offences. But feel it to be a degradation 
to wish to appear, or to consent to appear, in any matter 
better than you are. Yet rebel not against the exactions 
of your place and circumstances. They require high 
virtue and its good name. Concentrate your thoughts 
upon the former ; the latter, the good name, will not fail 

to come with it. Make yourself «aXo*f^)/a0oj—;faXos Kai ayados. 

Seek what I now earnestly commend to you all — KaXoKayadia 
— and do it, in the only true and sure way, by seeking 
till you find that which has so often been commended to 
you in a place and on occasions more sacred than this, 
and in the words of Divine origin — '* The Beauty of 
Holiness !" 



^t)C €oIUge Seal. 



^ 



FROM 



A SERMON DELIVERED IN THE CHAPEL, 

ON THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 
May 21, 1848. 



St. James, 1 : 17. 



" Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and coineth down 
from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of 
turning." 

You have just heard these words in the Epistle for the day ; and 
their occurring there suggested the thought of making them the sub- 
ject of my sermon now. They are, you know, the words which are 
engraved on the seal of the College as our motto; not merely to fill 
up the space usually given to a motto — nor yet because they and the 
device they explain are striking and appropriate ; but because they 
convey the great truth which lies at the bottom of all our efforts here — 
that God is the one source of all real good, and that we will acknowl- 
edge Him here, by our professions and our practice, as the source 
from whence alone we seek to derive anything, and as the One to- 
whose glory we strive to devote all of His own gifts ; — i. e. all the 
good and perfect things we may receive. You will remember the 
device on our seal. On a rock in a wide ocean, Man kneels — ^his 
head meekly bent — while his right hand reaches upwards to receive 
from the hand of God, which is mercifully extended down from the 
heavens, the bright torch oi Light; light of every kind, for soul, and 
head, and heart, for the whole man ; a light which illumines the dark 
waste around the kneeling suppliant ; while encircling this scene are the 

words, Ilao-o doaii ayaOri Kai nav Scjpriixa rtktiov avwOev ctrrt^" Every gOOd 

gift and every perfect gift is from above." The remaining words are 
implied, though the character and space of a seal would not allow 

them to be written out — Kara(iaivov ano Tov Ua-pog ronv (pwrcovrr ap o ovk 

Evi TrapaWayt], n rponrig anocxKiaaixa — descending from the Father of (the) 
Lights, with whom is no variableness, no change, nor any shadow, not 
the slightest sign or indication of any turning or alteration. Those of 
you who have observed and understood the Greek words of this verse, 
have noticed that for the word gift — which occurs twice in the Eng- 
lish — the Greek has two distinct words, though both of one origin : — 
every good gift 6o(7is, and every perfect gift 6copr,iia. This was hardly 
mere regard to euphony in the Apostle ; and if the conjecture be 

* See the Title page. 

4 



50 

correct tliat he quoted these words from some poet — for you observe 
they compose an hexameter line — 

Tlaara ioartg ayddri Kai nav ddprifia rektiov ;— 

Still we may believe that there was some design beyond mere rythm 
in the change of the word ; and if there be some special meaning in 
the apostle's use of the words, it seems to be this — Every gift that is 
good in the giving of it — in the process by which it is given, the very 
receiving of which is a holy and blessed discipline to us ; and every 
perfect gift, every thing given, which, when fully given and received^ 
is perfect, wanting nothing in itself or in its rich fruits — every such 
giving and every such gift is from above — is from heaven. Earth 
affords no such gifts. Earth's best and most perfect gifts are yet 
neither good in the giving nor perfect when we have received them. 
The acquiring of them is not a holy discipline ; and when they are 
acquired, they are anything but perfect treasures. We do not grow 
better, but worse, while we seek the gifts of earth. If we gain them, 
they are never what we anticipated. A thousand things may spoil 
them to us ; or any moment may sweep them away. But the gifts 
from above are far different. Our very pursuit of them, apart from 
success, (which is, however, always sure,) our very pursuit of 
heaven's gifts is a blessed thing to us; — we become better while 
seeking the gifts which God bestows, and when we gain them, there 
is no disappointment, no change, no destruction or loss of them. This 
I think is the spirit of the first part of this verse. 

It thus proceeds — Coming down — descending from the Father 
of (the) Lights — nv Trarpos tmv ^corotv; not the Father of light in general ; 
but the Father of the lights, which dispel the gloom which other- 
wise must rest on every soul, on every intellect, and on every heart. 
The expression is not a mere Hebraism for bright and glorious 
Father, but it strictly means the Father, not only of us His creatures, 
but of the clear, and joyful, and holy lights which can come forth 
from none but God to illumine, and cheer, and sanctify us. 

With whom is no variableness, no change, nor any sign of turning, 
as there is in the brightest of created lights — the Sun. In the sun 
there is variableness — napaWayri — a term, it may be, chosen for its 
nearness to the astronomical word, irapaXXa^tj, which signifies the dif- 
ference between the real and apparent place of a heavenly body : 
recognizing the fact that the sun itself or any other heavenly body 
appear to us to be where science assures us it is not. But the Father 
of Lights shows himself to us as He is, and where He is ; and the eye 
of faith needs no aid from science to be assured that she sees God as 
He is ; that He will not allow her to be deceived. 

And so in the material sun, there are shadows, signs of turning 
hither and thither, signs of changes already past and of others yet to 
come. There are none such in the Father of Lights. Brilliant and 
unchanging — knowing no alteration from all eternity, the Great 
Creator has made no emblem of Himself perfect. In all His crea- 
tures there are traces of imperfection. His glory He has given to no 
one else. , We must judge of Him by nothing we see among His 
works — they all fall below Him. 



, 



51 

Let us now consider what sort of gifts is meant by the Apostle. 
His first and chief reference is to higher gifts than those which the 
use of the words on the College seal would suggest. The apostle, we 
are sure, included all the gifts of God ; and we here would take in all he 
meant. He spoke first of spiritual gifts, and from them descended 
to the lower gifts of light to the mind and heart; and though we begin 
with these lower, we stop not short of the highest gifts God ever be- 
stows. A worldly and unreflecting person might think only of sanc- 
tified science when he looked upon the seal, audits device and motto; 
but as a whole it means all that St. James meant — that we are here to- 
gether to invoke and to obtain for ourselves, and for the children of 
the Church, all the highest and the best gifts which the Father of 
Lights ever bestows. ****** 

By an academical use of these words it is specially declared, that in 
all human learning and science it is true that every giving that is good^ 
and every gift given which is perfect, is from God; that it is only from 
Him that we can, to any real advantage, study or labor to acquire 
what the Father of lights is giving; and that all our acquirements — 
all gifts completely ours, are wretched and imperfect if we have not 
sought them from Him, and if we do not hold them and use them to 
His glory. 

Now to help you to realize this, let me most seriously tell you, that 
though here in His own house most solemnly, yet not here alone does 
God meet you and teach you. Li every lesson — in each study — ^in 
all your classes, God is the great teacher. He is there, ever bestow- 
ing on you His good giving, and offering you His perfect gifts. He 
does this, not merely because by His merciful providence He pro- 
vides you means and helps for acquiring human knowledge, but be- 
cause He then and there teaches you His truth. Teachers of sound 
learning are/or that work, God's ministers. He teaches you through 
them, less solemnly indeed than He here teaches and ministers through 
us, — yet still. He ministers His truth to you through your daily teach- 
^ers. And I say His truth — I may almost say — divine truth, because all 
truth is His, and therefore it is divine. He designs and desires you 
to receive such truth as His, as from Him, and as to be used to His 
glory. Do you ever think, in your study of language, from its gram- 
matical elements to its greatest philological niceties, that you are 
searching into principles and laws which God gave to men, which 
they never devised for themselves, but which they must follow if 
they would commune with Him and their fellows ? Do you ever re- 
flectthat God's Holy Spirit used language, and sanctified its lowest ele- 
ments in our sight, by adopting them all when he spoke to man ? 
When you study history, do you bear in mind that God is then re- 
counting to you the acts and laws of His providence over your race, 
and teaching and warning you by His recital of what He has done to 
those who serve Him and to those who reject Him ? When you give 
your minds to mathematical or natural science, do you pause to think 
that God is making known to you His eternal principles and laws of 
numbers and distance and motion ? of the proportion and mutual 
influences of His created agents and instruments ? that He is thus 
teaching you to reverence and adore Him by showing you that from 
the atom or the insect up to the mightiest system of the universe or 
to the noblest of His rational creatures, His perfect science created and 



62 

guides, and then changes or brings to an end ? When you study the 
philosophy of your own minds, do you remember that He is thus 
giving you a glimpse of Himself, in whose image you were made by 
Him, and to whose likeness you must be wholly conformed, if ever 
you would attain the bliss He designs for you ? And when you 
study the foundations and principles of His eternal laws of right and 
wrong, and trace His authority into all the details of your daily life, 
do you realize Him as the One to be supremely feared and obeyed? 
And, when you are called to learn more clearly the evidences of the 
Faith in Jesus Christ, which is your only hope and support; when 
He sheds upon your minds the fulness of His Heavenly light, so that 
He makes doubt impossible, can you forbear glorifying the mercy 
which thus exceedingly anticipates and supplies every need of the 
soul? And with these views of the sacred and holy character of all 
that you learn, can you withhold from Him your thanks that you are 
here taught to mark each step of your daily walk with prayer and 
praise to Him? to sanctify what else would be dry, barren, infidel 
exercise of the mere mind ? to learn, in connection with more secular 
truth, the whole system of His truth in the redemption and sanctifi- 
cation of your race, the glories and privileges of His Church and 
kingdom ; and to know each hour that all this comes from Him, not 
from man ; comes as His good giving and His perfect gift, making 
3'^ou better by the very way and method in which He bestows it, and 
perfectly filling and satisfying your immortal spirits with the good- 
ness and perfection of grace from the Father of Lights, through His 
Only and Ever Blessed Son. * * * * * 

Therefore, should your chief aim and end even now be His glory. 
You should anticipate the time when you will be actively employing 
the knowledge He is now giving you, in the works of some useful 
station which will advance His praise, and the present and eternal 
interests of your fellow -men. And you should never forget that for 
all these your present opportunities, you will be called to a strict 
account. If any hour now go by unheeded and unimproved, that hour 
He will have charged heavily against you in the great account. Or 
if any of you here gain knowledge — His knowledge — but receive it 
not and use it not as His; if you pervert God's Truth to Satan's ser- 
vice, and dishonor Him, and destroy your fellow-men by that which 
He gives you to be made the efficient instrument of His glory and 
your brother's salvation, woe will be to your soul ! But if you learn 
of Him, and to Him, and in Him, and ever devote all His good and 
perfect gifts to Him and His service, your reward is sure. All that 
you now are capable of learning and knowing is but very little ; far 
less in itself, yet far greater in its effects than you will ever be able 
to conceive, until that blessed hour when (God grant it) you shall hear 
Him say, in regard to knowledge as well as every other talent — ' 
" Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a 
few things, I will make thee ruler over many things ; enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord." Amen. 



